I was interviewed for an article on the role artists can play in innovation in Boston, a city renowned for other sorts of innovation whether it be technology, biotech, education etc. It’s an interesting topic and I actually am optimistic that artists are being included more and more in forward-thinking cutting-edge discussions that are not necessarily related to art.

In any case, read for my perspectives and those of several other talented Boston-area artists:

You won’t be regaled with a beginning-to-end story of, say, a heart attack from first twinge to hospital to recovery. Rather, you’ll be immersed in bits and pieces of human experience, all united by one concept: what it’s like to be a patient.

While Proteus is very much concerned with living in the now, Burgund is “trying to connect people to what is around them, past, present, and future.” Playthroughs of Proteus are ephemeral; there’s no way to record music in-game, leaving you to enjoy it in the moment. Proteus is about letting go while Scapes is about writing clues for the next person to consider.

“Now this is a guaranteed first date win. I jest but it’s true: Halsey Burgund’s new public art piece, a participatory soundscape encompassing the whole City of Cambridge, is an engaging and memorable way to while away an evening. You might even capture the sound of that stolen kiss.”

Perhaps it takes someone of a more artistic bent to build a platform for pinning songs and live-recorded audio to specific locations on a map — and then open-source it, so that any other individual or company can use it to build whatever they want using the same basic framework.
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Burgund’s apps are alluring, combining augmented reality, location, art, and crowdsourcing in a way that hasn’t quite been done before, though it builds on Burgund’s own Scapes project.

The ROUND project succeeds well beyond its stated mission. One of the hazards of public art is that neighborhood residents tend to grow accustomed to them and, over time, they fade into the landscape. The app counteracts that tendency by both identifying works and encouraging direct viewings—Cambridge’s own exotica, rediscovered by intrepid urban explorers. At the very least, the app encourages viewers to pay closer attention to their surroundings by, ironically, interacting with a cell phone.

I was recently interviewed for a new online radio program called TAPEdocs. The show takes an uncommon host-less approach to dive into the worlds of people who do interesting (or at least unusual) things.

Ongoing Projects

A Walk Through Deep Time

A walk through 4.57 billion years of the earth's history, layering ideas from across philosophy, science, and culture and inviting you to share your own sense of wonder.

ROUND:Cambridge

A new piece of public sound art created from personal responses to existing public art and the city of Cambridge, MA itself.

Music for Journaling

A participatory audio composition about sharing ideas and creating a critical community focused on public art and its role in society. Commissioned by Public Art Dialogue for Volume 2, Issue 1, "Audience Participation".

Hotel Dreamy

Where our dreams go on vacation... A growing collection of dream recollections and some music to bring them together.